Sublime, meditative yet elusive, Hamaguchi’s ecological drama isn’t that simple a concoction about capitalist expansion and its impact on the marginalised, exploring its theme on a more primal, anterior level.
Malaysia’s taboo but painful ‘513’ incident is tackled through Chong’s sophomore feature, an exceptional work that shrewdly uses a diptych narrative structure to delve deeper into unresolved trauma.
A ragtag group of grave robbers leads the way in Rohrwacher’s continuously inventive and occasionally sublime film, about the desires of humans to continue searching for existential meaning in both physical and metaphysical realms.
This Malaysian slow cinema mood piece may be slight with narrative but it re-centers the protagonist, a Vietnamese illegal immigrant who does odd jobs, in her own space of existential longing.
Franco’s work features nuanced and quietly affecting performances from Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, as it explores the unlikely encounter between a man suffering from the onset of memory loss and a woman with unresolved trauma.
The pleasures of food and romance in cinema make an exquisite return with one of 2023’s most underappreciated gems, about a renowned chef and his long-serving cook in their autumnal years whom he one day hopes to marry.
A son films his dying father’s last performances on the piano in this elegiac final tribute to one of the most creative musical minds of the last 50 years.
Something goes wrong in a student’s high-stakes history oral exam which sparks a national scandal in this measured Hungarian drama that sees the fateful collision of the personal and the political.
More deliberately paced than expected, Haynes’ tabloid-ish melodrama doesn’t quite land that well narratively or emotionally, though it features strong performances throughout.
A tad more exciting and invigorating than the first instalment, and one that poses existential questions about the heroic quests of the titular figure(s), this is a continuously inventive and surprising work of blockbuster animation.
Eternality Tan 